Glory

Two True Detective Collages, Both Mind-Blowing in Their Own Way

This is the story of two True Detective collages. The first is the opening-credits sequence for the lauded HBO series, which layered still photographs and images from the series in ways so unsettling and intricate they had new, creepy surprises each week. The second is the cover for a pirated DVD set that truly defies explanation. Simply behold the wonder, as found by Warming Glow.

To be clear, almost nothing on this cover—from the Las Vegas version of the Eiffel Tower to Matthew McConaughey’s body, which actually belongs to Brad Pitt—has anything to do with True Detective, save for maybe the cop cars in the bottom of the frame (and even then, don’t they look a little more modern than the show’s 90s setting?) And the Chicago Sun-Times would probably like us to clarify that they never called the show “Amazing Perform, Full-Frontal Action” — in fact, we can find no record of a quote remotely resembling that on the paper’s site. So who should sue for defamation first: the Paris Hotel of Las Vegas, or the Sun-Times.

Back to something True Detective related that’s actually good . . . over at Art of the Title there’s a great piece by creative director Patrick Clair about how they designed the show’s opening credits, with inspiration from double-exposed photographs, “as a great way to show characters that are marginalized or internally divided.” By placing slow-moving, ethereal images of the characters over the landscape of Louisiana, the credits, Clair says, do what the show does as a whole: “reveal character through location.”

Watch the series credits below to see what he means . . . though I won’t blame you if you now wish a brief shot of a fake Eiffel Tower could be included, just to amp things up a bit.